Real Clear Arts

Archive for the ‘artists’ Category

Tomorrow, Mass MoCA will announce six new partnerships that will bring to its galleries works by James Turrell, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer and an instrument maker named Gunnar Schonbeck, in collaboration with Bang on Can consortium.

Since 2012, when TEFAF celebrated its 25th anniversary, the Maastricht art fair has been awarding grants toward the conservation of objects held by museums that have attended the fair in that year. The other day, TEFAF announced the 2104 grants: the €50,000 annual amount from the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund will be split between two early paintings by Francisco de Zurbaran.

Not too long ago, I was in a movie theater when up came a preview for a film called “Mr. Turner,” which would be J.M.W. Tuner to RCA readers. I checked it out and discovered that it was set to open last Friday (Oct. 31) in Britain (after being shown at at Cannes) and in the U.S. on Dec. 19. Early word: it’s good.

On Sunday, the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa opened what I think must be a fascinating show: IMPACT: The Philbrook Indian Annual. It’s a retrospective on the competition the Philbrook held for 33 years, from 1946 to 1979, open to Native American artists. The museum says that(more…)

I’d wager that most people don’t think of “beauty” when they think of the art of Anselm Kiefer. So when Janne Siren, the director of the Alrbight-Knox Art Gallery, and I met last week, I was surprised by the catalogue he gave me for the Kiefer exhibition that, alas, closed there on Sunday. It was titled Beyond Landscape, and here’s part of its description: (more…)

Life is constricted, to some extent, for all single-artist museums–and more than most at the Clyfford Still Museum. As decreed by the artist, it can never exhibit works by any other artist and it can’t have a restaurant or auditorium, among other things. Yet almost about three years ago, in November, 2011, it opened in Denver.

Last week, I was honored to sit opposite Nobel-prize winner/neuropsychiatrist Eric Kandel at a small dinner. Kandel, seeking to understand how memory works, figured it out by studying its physiological basis in the cells of sea slugs. For that, he won the Nobel in 2000. More recently, he has turned some of his attention to art. In 2012, he published The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present.

This is just plain bad: Last week, a painting titled Madonna with the Saints John the Evangelist and Gregory Thaumaturgus (1639) was stolen from a church in Modena, Italy. Not only was the church alarm system in active, but also the Baroque masterpiece wasn’t insured.

Many people love going behind the scenes — and many art museums now offer some sort of occasion or event to do so. Next week, if you’re in Washington, the Freer-Sackler will let us all in on the installation of Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, who is representing her country at the Venice Biennale next year.